First off, welcome to everyone who’s here from TT or something. I’m amazed anyone actually reads this thing. (And thanks for linking to me, Martin!)
Aaaanyway, today’s topic is representative mechanics. You know, where what the rules say you’re doing isn’t exactly what you do.
Okay, I’m going to need to explain this further.
Take hit points. Let’s say we’ve got an average tanker barbarian with HP in the triple digits, and an average Errol Flynn swashbuckler. The tank is just fine with his HP representing just how many times he gets whacked with a sword, but what about Flynnie? His character is really more of a thin, welterweight type, and it wouldn’t make sense for him to take five arrows to the gut and survive. So, what does he do?
This is where representative mechanics come into play. Errol here talks with his DM, and they decide that instead of wounds Flynnie’s HP represents his stamina, or defensive moves in his repertoire. So now, when Flynnie fights, he’s utterly untouchable — until that one perfect thrust gets by him, wounding him severely enough that he drops. This gives much more of the impression of an invincible swordsman with an answer for anything, and also those really long sword duels that were in all of the old movies. (Man, do I miss those.)
There’s a great example of this over at Jeff’s Gameblog. In that article (an excellent read, by the way) he mentions how his player Doug roleplayed out the buying of a 120k sword as receiving the sword and throwing a block part. (Y’know, if Greyhawk were a block.) The idea was that buying a sword is boring, so he turned it into something interesting.
The underlying concept here is simple: don’t let the predefined fluff spoil your fun. As long as it doesn’t change the mechanical outcome, there is no balance change whatsoever when a character roleplays something differently — so why not let them have their fun and do it?
